Technicians at Mooresville cable TV provider MI-Connection had to scramble Tuesday night to remove a vulgar audio feed posted on one of its channels by hackers.
The 25-second audio interrupted the airing of a Davidson College basketball game on MI-Connection's channel 4. The audio, a rap song making vulgar references to President Donald Trump, repeated in a loop for about 30 minutes before officials were alerted by a viewer and engineers were able to remove it, said David Auger, general manager of Mooresville-based MI-Connection.
He said the incident occurred when somebody apparently hacked into the cable provider's audio feed of the basketball game from WHIP radio.
"As soon as we were alerted to the issue we shut down the audio feed and contacted WHIP," Auger said in an email Wednesday to elected officials in Mooresville and Davidson, the two towns that own MI-Connection.
"We have since been informed by WHIP that someone hacked into the IP address of the receiver MI-Connection uses to convert the audio feed to channel 4. We are working with WHIP to implement safeguards to prevent this from occurring in the future."
The offensive audio feed was brought to MI-Connection's attention at 7:26 p.m. by a viewer and the feed was shut down by 7:41 p.m., Auger said.
Apparently MI-Connection was not the only communications provider victimized by the anti-Trump audio. Several FM radio stations around the country reported similar incidents last week.
In a statement to the Tribune, Auger said, "While I can’t promise that someone won’t figure out a way to hack into our network, I will assure you that we are doing everything possible to ensure that this and other potential avenues are more secure."
